query: SGA ep "Irresponsible"

[tielan]

I know that a lot of people hated this ep. It's one of the eps I skipped and never bothered to catch up with (along with a handful of others at that time).

Actually, if you hated it, I'd like to hear from you: the whys and the wherefores of your dislike. I know the general premise and approximately what happens, and I'm not going to be psychotic on spoilers.

I'm interested in people's takes on the episode, but the main thing I want to know is...

I've seen people say that Kolya deserved a better death than he got. My understanding is mostly that somehow he found out Shep and co. were on the planet, tried a takeover, and Shep took Lucius Lavin's "in-vul-ner-a-ble" device and let Kolya have the first shot before he shot Kolya back.

The details might be wrong.

What would people have considered a "satisfactory ending" to the Kolya storyline (assuming that they had to end it)?

HALP?

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I was never even that fond of Kolya as a character, but I hated the fact that the whole episode was played for laughs, with no real sense of menace or danger. (A problem I had in general with much of season 3.) I like the show's humorous element but not when it's so overwhelming that there's no tension -- especially when most of it wasn't even funny! Kolya went from being a menacing and fairly complex bad guy in Storm/Eye (he's not *evil*, just doing his job) to a cartoonish buffoon who died in a ludicrous parody of a Wild West shootout. Nowhere in the episode is there any feeling that the characters or the townspeople are really in danger.

I think I would have been much happier with it if they'd taken the exact same scenario and played it "straight" -- a revenge-obsessed baddie kidnapping Sheppard's little Atlantis "family" should be full of opportunities for worry and self-sacrifice and little bonding moments, but instead, most of what we got was jokes and the characters standing around looking bored, not to mention WAY too much Lucius, the most annoying guest star ever.

[tielan]

a revenge-obsessed baddie kidnapping Sheppard's little Atlantis "family" should be full of opportunities for worry and self-sacrifice and little bonding moments

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

One of my problems with Stargate's "funny" episodes is that they rely more on in-your-face slapstick than the subtler types of humour.

One of the "best" moments of humour I've seen in Atlantis is in a completely unfunny episode - Missing.

Teyla and Keller arrive on New Athos, and Teyla offers to take one of the two bags Jennifer is carrying. Jennifer says, "Oh, no, I packed it, I should carry it." In the next scene, Teyla's carrying both bags.

Oh, and the barbarian guys in the same episode, who are shot sucking on the lollipops Jennifer took to treat the Athosian kids. They didn't have to say a thing, but it was a great moment.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Oh, I loved the barbarians with the lollipops! That was such an amusing bit, and worked in so nicely.

I suppose it's a matter of individual taste, because I really love funny, tongue-in-cheek sci-fi, and it's a pretty rare thing to find in the genre. It's why I loved Red Dwarf so much, too. But bad comedy is just painful.

[tielan]

See, in my head, Red Dwarf works in an entirely different way to the Stargates.

RD gets away with being over-the-top because, well, it's Red Dwarf!